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Over the past decade, worldwide production of illicit drugs has risen dramatically: opium and marijuana production has roughly doubled and coca production tripled. Street prices of cocaine and heroin have fallen significantly in the past 20 years, reflecting increased availability. Despite apparent national political resolve to deal with the drug problem, inherent contradictions regularly appear between U.S. anti-drug policy and other national policy goals and concerns. The mix of competing domestic and international pressures and priorities has produced an ongoing series of disputes within and between the legislative and executive branches concerning U.S. international drug policy. One contentious issue has been the Congressionally-mandated certification process, an instrument designed to induce specified drug-exporting countries to prioritize or pay more attention to the fight against narcotics businesses.

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This report provides background concerning various aspects of fuel ethanol, and a discussion of the current related policy issues.

Funeral program for Mrs. Emma Blocker Green Johnson, born August 11, 1905 and died April 2, 2003. The funeral was held Monday, April 7, 2003 at St. Philip's Episcopal Church, officiated by Rev. David D. Wendel. Funeral arrangements were made through Carter-Taylor-Williams Mortuary and she was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery near San Antonio, Texas.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "More than 60,000 Americans and foreign nationals work at about 260 diplomatic posts worldwide. Since the mid-1990s, GAO has highlighted the need for State and other federal agencies to establish a systematic process for determining their overseas staffing levels, particularly after the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. GAO was asked to discuss three reports, including two being issued today, on rightsizing--that is, realigning the number and location of staff--at U.S. embassies and consulates: (1) the rightsizing framework GAO developed last year, (2) follow-on work to further test the framework, and (3) the processes to project staffing levels for new embassy construction and the proposals to share construction costs among U.S. agencies."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The 1998 terrorist attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa highlighted security deficiencies in diplomatic facilities, leading the Department of State to embark on an estimated $16 billion embassy construction program. The program's key objective is to provide safe, secure, and cost-effective buildings for employees overseas. Given that the size and cost of new facilities are directly related to agencies' anticipated staffing needs, it is imperative that future requirements be projected as accurately as possible. GAO was asked to (1) assess whether State and other federal agencies have adopted a disciplined process for determining future staffing requirements and (2) review cost-sharing proposals for agencies with overseas staff."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Much of the response to a bioterrorist attack would occur at the local level. Many local areas and their supporting state agencies, however, may not be adequately prepared to respond to such an attack. In the Public Health Improvement Act that was passed in 2000, Congress directed GAO to examine state and local preparedness for a bioterrorist attack. In this report GAO provides information on state and local preparedness and state and local concerns regarding the federal role in funding and improving preparedness. To gather this information, GAO visited seven cities and their respective state governments, reviewed documents, and interviewed officials. Cities are not identified because of the sensitive nature of this issue."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Since the mid-1990s, GAO has highlighted the need for the Department of State and other agencies to establish a systematic process for determining their overseas staffing levels. To support this long-standing need and in support of the President's Management Agenda, GAO developed a framework for assessing overseas workforce size and identified options for rightsizing. Because the framework was largely based on work at the U.S. embassy in Paris, GAO was asked to determine whether the rightsizing framework is applicable at U.S. embassies in developing countries. To accomplish this objective, we visited three U.S. embassies in West Africa--a medium-sized post in Dakar, Senegal; and two small embassies in Banjul, The Gambia; and Nouakchott, Mauritania--and applied the framework and its corresponding questions there."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Because of concern about school district spending on administration, Congress directed GAO in two separate mandates in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 to (1) examine how school districts defined and spent Title I funds on administrative activities and (2) review Title I expenditures in at least six school districts. In response to these mandates, we are reporting on (1) how five studies define Title I administrative expenditures and what they found about the percentage of funds spent on these activities and (2) what proportion of Title I funds was spent on administrative activities compared with instructional and other activities in six school districts."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The attacks on September 11, 2001, show that threats to U.S. security can now come from any number of terrorist groups, at any number of locations, and in wholly unexpected ways. As a result, the Department of Defense (DOD) is shifting to a new defense strategy focused on dealing with uncertainty by acting quickly across a wide range of combat conditions. One key ingredient of the new strategy is the availability of aircraft to carry out their missions. Key measures of availability include the percentage of time an aircraft can perform at least one or all of its assigned missions, termed the "mission capable" (MC) and "full mission capable" (FMC) rates, respectively. GAO examined whether key DOD aircraft have been able to meet MC and FMC goals in recent years, and DOD's process for setting aircraft availability goals."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In 2001, letters contaminated with anthrax resulted in 23 cases of the disease, 5 deaths, and the contamination of numerous U.S. Postal Service facilities, including the Southern Connecticut Processing and Distribution Center in Wallingford, Connecticut (the Wallingford facility). GAO was asked to address, among other matters, whether (1) the Postal Service followed applicable guidelines and requirements for informing employees at the facility about the contamination and (2) lessons can be learned from the response to the facility's contamination."

OAK-B135 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION FISSION REACTOR ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE PERIOD OCTOBER 1, 2001 THROUGH DECEMBER 31, 2002

The Global Unified Parallel File System (GUPFS) project is a multiple-phase, five-year project at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center to provide a scalable, high performance, high bandwidth, shared file system for all the NERSC production computing and support systems. The primary purpose of the GUPFS project is to make it easier to conduct advanced scientific research using the NERSC systems. This is to be accomplished through the use of a shared file system providing a unified file namespace, operating on consolidated shared storage that is directly accessed by all the NERSC production computing and support systems. During its first year, FY 2002, the GUPFS project focused on identifying, testing, and evaluating existing and emerging shared/cluster file system, SAN fabric, and storage technologies; identifying NERSC user input/output (I/O) requirements, methods, and mechanisms; and developing appropriate benchmarking methodologies and benchmark codes for a parallel environment. This report presents the activities and progress of the GUPFS project during its first year, the results of the evaluations conducted, and plans for near-term and longer-term investigations.

We have developed initial estimates of the potential benefits of cool roofs on federal buildings and facilities (building scale) as well as extrapolated the results to all national facilities under the administration of the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP). In addition, a spreadsheet ''calculator'' is devised to help FEMP estimate potential energy and cost savings of cool roof projects. Based on calculations for an average insulation level of R-11 for roofs, it is estimated that nationwide annual savings in energy costs will amount to $16M and $32M for two scenarios of increased roof albedo (moderate and high increases), respectively. These savings, corresponding to about 3.8 percent and 7.5 percent of the base energy costs for FEMP facilities, include the increased heating energy use (penalties) in winter. To keep the cost of conserved energy (CCE) under $0.08 kWh-1 as a nationwide average, the calculations suggest that the incremental cost for cool roofs should not exceed $0.06 ft-2, assuming that cool roofs have the same life span as their non-cool counterparts. However, cool roofs usually have extended life spans, e.g., 15-30 years versus 10 years for conventional roofs, and if the costs of re-roofing are also factored in, the cutoff incremental cost …

Funeral program for Emma Blocker Green Johnson, born August 11, 1905 and died April 2, 2003. The funeral was held April 7, 2003 at St. Philip's Episcopal Church, officiated by Rev. David D. Wendel. Funeral arrangements were made through Carter-Taylor-Williams Mortuary and she was buried in Ft. Sam Houston National Cemetery near San Antonio, Texas. Includes an obituary printed on a separate card.

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This report discusses several federal programs support child care for low-income families, the principal being a federal block grant program: The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). The CCDBG is administered by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and provides allotments to states, according to a formula, which are used to subsidize the child care expenses of low-income families with children under age 13.

Compression tests between 4.2 and 1273 K, compositional variation and conventional transmission electron microscopy were used to investigate the deformation and twinning behavior of C15 HfV{sub 2}+Nb - based Laves phase alloys. We chose two phase C15/bcc alloys to improve the ambient temperature ductility which has not been found in the single phase Laves intermetallic compound. Transmission electron microscopy revealed that substantial mechanical twinning takes place in the C15 Laves phase matrix at room temperature and 77 K. A deep minimum in the flow stress, with a drop of nearly 500 MPa, appears at around 77 K in the C15/bcc two-phase alloy with C15 matrix. Since no such anomaly is seen in the bcc phase, we believe that the cause of this can be attributed to mechanical twinning in the C15 Laves phase. Twin bands observed in the C15 matrix of deformed samples at both 298 K and 77 K can be classified into three categories by their thicknesses; coarse twin bands about 10 nm to several hundreds nm thick, fine twin bands around 3 to 10 nm thick, and ultra fine twin bands with average thickness of 1.5 nm. A high density of ultra-fine twin bands is the characteristic …

Elephant and rhinoceros dung was used to investigate the feasibility of generating methane from the dung. The Knoxville Zoo produces 30 cubic yards (23 m{sup 3}) of herbivore dung per week and cost of disposal of this dung is $105/week. The majority of this dung originates from the Zoo's elephant and rhinoceros population. The estimated weight of the dung is 20 metric tons per week and the methane production potential determined in experiments was 0.033 L biogas/g dung (0.020 L CH{sub 4}/g dung), and the digestion of elephant dung was enhanced by the addition of ammonium nitrogen. Digestion was better overall at 37 C when compared to digestion at 50 C. Based on the amount of dung generated at the Knoxville Zoo, it is estimated that two standard garden grills could be operated 24 h per day using the gas from a digester treating 20 metric ton herbivore dung per week.

A handwritten memo including a message: "Will get 6 checks/page front and back. Effective May 31, 2003." Backside of the memo is an announcement from the Dallas National Bank regarding the arrival of image statements.

This letter report is a supplement to the letter reports submitted previously under ECRs No. 2002-600-012 (Borrow Area C) and No. 2002-600-012a (CWC expansion). This letter report covers all areas that may be subject to surface disturbance under Alternative Groups A, B, C, D1, D2, D3, E1, E2, E3, and the No Action Alternative of the Hanford Solid Waste Environmental Impact Statement (HSW EIS), except for the following Low-Level Burial Grounds (LLBGs). The LLBGs proposed for use in the HSW EIS that are not subject of this letter report (218-W-3A, 218-W-3AE, 218-W 4B, 218-W-5, the developed portion of 218-W-4C, and the eastern half [except the northeastern corner] of 218-W-6 in the 200 West Area; and 218-E-10 and 218-E-12B in the 200 East Area) are surveyed annually. Annual letter reports concerning these are currently sent to Mr. Brett M. Barnes of Fluor Hanford, Inc. For the areas of surface disturbance described herein we provide a summary of field survey methods, survey results, and considerations and recommendations based on these results.

Although the current baseline Hanford flowsheet for immobilizing low-activity waste (LAW) assumes borosilicate-based glass, opportunities exist to improve or change this baseline to reduce the current schedule and cost requirements of accomplishing the mission of site cleanup. Development of an alternative glass-forming system can lead to this goal of cost and schedule reduction through enhanced waste loading and higher plant throughput. The purpose of this project is to investigate the iron-phosphate glass system as an alternative for immobilizing Hanford LAW. Previous studies on the iron phosphate glass systems and their potential advantages for immobilizing Hanford LAW have been reviewed and technical uncertainties and data required before implementing this technology have been presented. A team of researchers and engineers from the MO-SCI Corporation, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Savannah River Technology Center, and the University of Missouri at Rolla has performed a series of tests to address some of the open questions about the potential use of iron phosphate glass for immobilizing Hanford LAW. The results of this team effort are summarized along with recommendations regarding the further laboratory study needs. Additional longer-term testing requirements for implementing the iron phosphate glass-based immobilization process at Hanford are also presented.